1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to tape drives and in particular to tape drives having bezels which accommodate magnetic tape cartridges.
2. Description of the Related Art
Magnetic tape cartridges or cassettes are used to house magnetic tape as the medium for recording and storage of information in magnetic tape libraries. Read and write operations of information to and from the tape medium is carried out by insertion of the tape cartridge into a read/write device referred to as a tape drive, tape recorder or tape deck. Tape drives are usually designed as a component of a specific tape library product. Insertion and removal of a tape cartridge into and from a tape drive is usually done by an accessor comprising an automated gripper device through a bezel forming a front face of the tape drive.
The bezel, which provides a physical interface between the gripper and the tape drive, is required to have an opening, or window, to accommodate the shape of the tape cartridge and a number of features which interact with the gripper to facilitate the mechanical processes for insertion and removal of the tape cartridge by the gripper. Typically, a required feature on the bezel is a target or fiducial that the gripper senses in order to locate the window in which to insert or from which to remove a tape cartridge. A problem with the present art is that each library product uses fiducials that differ in location, shape, size and reflectivity so that only tape drives having a bezel with the unique fiducials of that library can be used with that library. Another problem is that the fiducials on the bezels forming the front face of the tape drive are susceptible to damage when the tape drive is manually removed from the library. Therefore, there is a need for an improved bezel design that overcomes these problems.